


Run Every Time

by acollectionofdaydreams



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 3x05 A Life in the Day, Angst, Canon Compliant, M/M, Mosaic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 22:28:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19094335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acollectionofdaydreams/pseuds/acollectionofdaydreams
Summary: An imagining of what led up to that "if you want to live your life, live it here" fight in 3x05. Also sort of an Eliot Waugh character study.





	Run Every Time

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song Run Every Time by Gavin Degraw, which is like the foundation of my personal Eliot playlist.

What Eliot and Quentin had was complicated. It was an unpredictable mess of undefined labels and boundaries, wrapped up in every emotion known to humankind. It had been uncomplicated once, at the beginning, on that night of their first anniversary at the mosaic. When Quentin kissed him in that romantic as fuck torch light, it was the natural culmination of years of friendship and an additional year of relying on each other and getting to know each other in incredibly intimate and vulnerable ways. It was the sex they’d had immediately after that had set them on this course. 

Or perhaps, it was Eliot deciding not to talk about it the next morning that had done it. _Let’s save our overthinking for the puzzle, yeah?_ , he’d said. He’d deck himself in that moment given half the chance. It wasn’t because he didn’t care that he'd brushed it off. It was just what he did. Things got real and he shut them down. And he’d known that things with Quentin had the potential to get very real. He’d miscalculated though by a longshot. He hadn’t seen at the time that he couldn’t stick Quentin in his box of casual sexual encounters where his previous lovers had resided because Quentin stubbornly did not fit there. For the life of him, he tried though. 

What followed was several months of sex they did not discuss and an internal battle waging in Eliot’s mind. He was furious at himself. He’d gotten himself into this situation, but the damage was done and there was no way out. Every night that he laid in bed with Quentin’s naked body draped across him as he slept like a goddamn baby, Eliot wanted to say something. He wanted it to mean something so desperately that he couldn’t stand it. He didn’t get that though because he was Eliot. He fucked up everything he touched, and for that reason, he was better off not even trying. God, he wanted to though, and that cognitive dissonance meant that he perpetually hesitated until the very last possible second until it was too late.

The last possible second came on a balmy hot summer afternoon when they’d gotten fed up at the latest tile failure and decided to blow off some steam in the usual way. When they’d laid in bed afterwards, Quentin had been quiet, pensive. It was too hot to have their skin touching, so they were lying side by side instead. 

“What are we doing, El?” he asked.

 _This is the time to say something_ , his brain urged. Instead, what came out was, “I’m pretty sure we just had sex, Quentin.”

Quentin gave him a half-hearted smile and rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, I was there,” he joked, “but I mean, what are we doing with us? We can’t just keep having sex then not talking about it and pretending like that’s normal.”

“Why not?” Eliot asked. “It’s working, isn’t it?”

Stupid. He was so stupid.

Quentin sat up and looked at him. His joking mood was gone completely now. He was looking at Eliot like he was about to start a fight, and Eliot knew there was no stopping it at this point. 

“You really mean that, don’t you?” Quentin asked.

He barked out a humorless laugh, and Eliot sat up too.

“What do you want from me, Quentin?” Eliot asked, “Did you expect for this to be some kind of whirlwind fairytale romance? We’re stuck in the past in this shithole working on a goddamn impossible puzzle, and we can’t stop because if we do then we fail everyone we know in the future.”

Quentin scoffed and shook his head, his gaze settling on a spot on the other side of the cottage.

“You’re unbelievable,” he said. “You know, it’s a real possibility that we might fail. We might never solve this puzzle.”

Eliot sighed, “That won’t happen.”

Quentin carried on, “And if that happens, do you really want to waste your whole life here just waiting for something to happen that never fucking will? I want to live my life, Eliot. You may be fine with whatever this is forever,” he gestured between them, “but I’m not.”

Quentin tossed the sheets aside and started to get dressed in his Fillorian clothes he’d taken to wearing after their old clothes had all but deteriorated. Eliot followed suit and reached for his own. Once Quentin was mostly dressed, he brushed past Eliot and through the door. He was still tying his tunic as Eliot followed him out.

“We could be done tomorrow for all you know. We can’t just throw away all this time we’ve invested,” Eliot said. He walked past Quentin and back to their clipboard they’d been planning the next design on. 

Because Eliot never could leave well enough alone, he added, “If you want to live your life, live it here.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Quentin asked in a tired voice from somewhere behind him.

“You know exactly what that means,” Eliot snapped.

There was a beat of silence, and Eliot knew he’d gone just that little bit too far. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of tiles falling against the mosaic. He turned around, and Quentin was standing there, not even trying to hide that his foot was still halfway in the air.

“Oops,” Quentin said.

“Real mature, Q,” he replied.

They didn’t talk after that. Quentin silently got to work on laying the tiles for the next design while Eliot unhelpfully plopped down in the chair to the side. Eliot closed his eyes, feeling the exhaustion from the sex and the fight and the heat taking over him. Before he knew it, he’d dozed off to the quiet sound of tiles clacking against each other while Quentin worked.

Arielle showed up without Lunk after that, and Quentin finally got his wish. She gave him everything Eliot couldn’t, and she was such a delight that Eliot couldn’t even be mad about it. In the years to come, he’d grow to love her and Teddy and the family they’d become to him. And after she was gone, he’d grow to let himself love Quentin too. For now though, he was left alone with his stupid pride again and had no one to blame but himself.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at folie-a-hayley if you wanna know


End file.
